With the advent and development of the Internet network, including the World Wide Web and other connected sub-networks; the network interaction experience has been continually enriched over the years and much development continues. In a large part, network users, both veteran and novice have a basic human commonality in that they all share three basic desires that materialize into behavioral traits when engaging in network-enhanced interaction. These behavioral traits are the desire for communication with others, the desire to collect and/or acquire digital content, and the desire to collaborate with others to help solve some problem or to resolve an issue. As behavioral traits, these basic needs can be expanded into many sub-categories. Communication includes interaction over channels such as Instant Messaging (IM), email, posting boards, chat, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), analog voice, etc. Collection includes collecting art, knowledge, music, photographs, software, news, and so on. Collaboration includes group discussions, task fulfillment, and any other collective efforts to solve a problem or perform a function. In basic form communication, collection, and collaboration are very tightly intertwined as basic desires.
As practices many users may unequally engage in the just-mentioned behaviors. For example, virtually all network users have active email accounts and active Instant Messaging capabilities. Most users have IP telephony capabilities and networking collaboration capabilities, at least installed on their computer systems if not actively configured for use. Many users have peer-to-peer file sharing capabilities, often coupled with communication capabilities. General communication may arguably be the most dominant network practice, followed by collection and sharing of content and network collaboration not necessarily in the stated order.
To further illustrate the imbalance of the three core behaviors for any one user consider that some users engage heavily in instant messaging, voice and, or email correspondence, while almost never engaging in file transfers or content downloading. Others engage more heavily in collaboration while lightly engaged in file transfer, content download, and common or casual communication. Still others practice content downloading and file sharing more often than collaboration. One can readily attest that it is difficult to practice one behavior exclusively without also practicing the others to some extent.
Software providers have long recognized the need to fulfill these basic desires by providing the capabilities in a single interface and have provided many well-known communication applications that provide access to casual and business communication as well as collaboration and file transfer capabilities. Programs like Net-Meeting™ and ICQ™, among many others attempt to aggregate these capabilities into a single accessible interface some times integrating separate communications applications for single point launching.
Users generally belong to a variety of communities and organizations that may or may not be tightly structured or organized. For example, a user may have family and friends in their on-line address book along with work associates from the job (two communities that should be separated). The same user may belong to a church group and a golf group, or some other sports group. The same user may also volunteer at a wildlife rehabilitation center. However loosely formed and organized, these separate groups often have a central Web presence, for example, a Web site, posting board, or the like. Likewise many of the group members or associates also have individual on-line capabilities like ISP accounts, email addresses and so on.
A user associated with more than one group logically has varying personas or faces that he or she presents to each group. Moreover, the user may logically be willing to share only varying degrees and depth of information with these separate groups largely restricted to the subject matter(s) appropriate to the group. For example, the user's family members and close friends would not share the same type and depth of information as the user's work associates, or the user's wildlife rehab associates. It may be desired by a user, and in fact is logical to conclude that in association with these different groups that group boundaries should be respected with reference to communication channels and formal as well as informal information sharing.
A drawback to virtually all of the available communication channels whether they are separate channels or integrated into a communication application, is that a user may have to provide a basic permanent identity and profile for these programs to work successfully. For example, an email account generally requires a permanent email address that the user may have to maintain unless the account is to be abandoned. Using more than one email address generally requires more than one email account for a given user. Likewise instant message applications may require a standard email account and identity.
Collaborative tools for business like IP telephone, white boarding, and file transfer services similarly boil down to a single user identity, most likely one he or she uses for most communication channels. Therefore, a user wishing to establish boundaries between different activities associated with different groups in a social architecture generally has a daunting organization task of managing communication methods and channels between different members of different groups as well as manually separating contacts within one or more address books or contact lists. It is extremely likely that many times information that was for one group inadvertently becomes available to another group such as an email address and profile or some file or attachment. Communication channels for each group become blurred and any established boundaries between groups tend to deteriorate over time.
One mechanism for enabling users to communicate, collaborate, and collect digital content is the well-known Usenet convention. Usenet is a collection of user-submitted notes or messages about various subjects posted to loosely organized servers known as news servers. News servers can be Internet-hosted or hosted on a sub-network accessible through the Internet. These servers operate according to a network protocol termed network News Transfer Protocol or NNTP. Users of Usenet use software applications known as newsreaders that are adapted to enable a user to subscribe to one or more of many hundreds or even thousands of available news groups for the purpose of reading messages posted by other users and posting messages for others to read. Subject matter available for access in a news server is loosely organized under different topics or subjects, referred to collectively as newsgroups. Therefore, for any given newsgroup, there will be hundreds if not thousands of ongoing interactions loosely organized according to a post/response format threading of message headers, posted messages, and posted replies.
In some cases newsgroups are moderated so that the headings and posted messages are somewhat in-line with the topic of the group and unwanted content is edited out. A great many newsgroups are completely un-moderated and anonymous. In these groups a user can post any type of message that he or she desires. Whether or not the posting actually fits the general topic is immaterial. Of course, any conceivable topic may be fodder for a newsgroup. Many companies offer moderated newsgroups that cater to their clients or customers wherein the subject matters for the groups are about their offered products. In these types of groups, users often collaborate with each other to resolve problems or issues.
More recently, news servers have become repositories for storing binary content in the form of picture files, movie files, game files and other downloadable content. Collectors often subscribe to specific newsgroups through which content that the user wants to collect is posted. While formerly used more for communication and collaboration, Usenet is now used more and more for collection and sharing of binary files and HTTP links to binary files.
As Usenet has evolved over the years, so has the software that enables users to partake in the experience. Although most Web browsers and email clients support Usenet, there are especially dedicated programs that enable more efficient sampling, subscribing and manipulation of content from Usenet. The inventors have developed a particular newsreader known in the market as the Agent reader. The Agent reader allows conventional Usenet practices of newsgroup sampling through header sampling; finding and subscribing to newsgroups; finding and subscribing to free newsgroups; posting of messages to newsgroups after subscribing or to free groups; download of binaries; posting of binaries; integration with point-of-presence (POP) and Simple Message Transfer Protocol (SMTP) email accounts. Agent™ also provides database conventions for managing and archiving retrieved content and a search convention for finding specific content within any particular newsgroup.
Evolution of Usenet to a more media-heavy, digital collection environment has also invited more undesirable content encountered in the way of Spam messaging, unwanted pop-ups and the like wherein the content matter of the message or binary has nothing even remotely to do with a particular newsgroup topic. In some cases sampling 50 headers of a group returns mostly junk messages that are not topically aligned to the group subject matter. Still, the popularity of Usenet has increased with many attracted to its relative anonymity and loose organization.
Communication, collaboration, and collection behaviors are all possible and practiced currently with reference to many programs already mentioned above including newsreaders, peer-to-peer applications, chat software programs, some email clients, and so on. Many users of these applications become overwhelmed when receiving great numbers of messages, sorting through huge address books for contacts, and trying to regulate and manage contacts and downloaded messages and attached files. Most conventions for sorting and filing messages are manual conventions. In other words a user most often than not has to physically create file folders, if those in a list are not sufficient, and manually select and move messages and other content into them.
Another drawback in prior-art is that virtually all available applications for communication, collaboration, and collection focus mainly on content management to protect against Spam messages, undesirable downloads or attachments, and other unwanted messages. Content management is handled through user-configured or regulated filters that sort messages, for example, and eliminate those messages found to fit the filter description. Some applications allow you to block messages sent from certain senders based on the sender's identity through a user-created block list or ignore list. Generally speaking though, users must exert much time, effort, and patience to manually configure one or most often more than one application to manage content.
Many businesses use a plurality of identities when sending messages to users through email for example. A particular entity may have several different identities relating to differing departments of service, some of which the user would rather not receive messages from. Because the user has a permanent identity when dealing with other on-line entities, his or her identity information and, in some cases behavioral information gets aggregated and sold to other businesses who then begin spamming the user with emails, instant message pop-ups, even faxes and telephone calls if the information is known to them.
As previously described, when messages abound in all groups subscribed to and created by any user, the tasks of managing those messages according to which group, which address book, which contact list, which download folder, and so on becomes rather arduous. Most automated mechanisms for management of messages are task intensive and difficult to understand and configure. Lack of understanding complex management tasks that depend on multiple created rules for success renders a user in a state of constant distraction when the number of rules and tasks become more numerous. A user facing many configuration tasks for content and messaging management for more than one medium is more likely than not to revert to manual threadbare techniques.
It has occurred to the inventors that in an interface supporting messaging communication, collaboration, and content collection an architecture focused more on message management through user and sender identities would be a far more efficient tool set than what is currently available in the art.
Digital collectors also collaborate and communicate to try and locate specific content and to share content with specific others. In the case of Usenet, content authors may be largely anonymous however they do publish their Usenet identities so that other users can respond to them and communicate or collaborate with them. For the most part digital collection in Usenet and other applications is not organized in the sense that a user gets what he or she downloads. In many cases, especially in Usenet environments, there may or may not be thumbnails to sample for picture files or for movie snippets as part of a series description. Moreover descriptions of content depend on the perception of the poster or author and are more likely than not limited to only a few descriptive words or phrases.
Digital collections in Usenet comprise basically postings of a series of binary files, for example, a series of pictures, a movie that may be split-up into a series of short clips, or a software utility or game that is posted as a series of downloads split from the whole by a file splitter and compression application such as WinRAR. In many cases there are re-posts of content that is missing some of its pieces or files. A program known as SmartPAR is sometimes used to provide recovery of missing RAR files of a series. Also, there may be different quality versions of a posted series authored by different Posters. In this case it is desirable to be able to locate the best quality version, or the version that may be compatible with a specific user platform or digital player or viewer. Bandwidth and time spent on-line are also issues to contend with. It would be desirable to be able to locate through identity and enhanced content sampling the best digital content from a particular newsgroup without spending a lot of time and bandwidth downloading.
Music finder and picture finder applications are available in most readers, but they simply point out the existence of a jpeg or movie file or series. It would be desirable to be able to sample content by locating rich content description elements that fully describe a series and individual elements of a series. Moreover, applying identity management to the task of searching for content can enable a user to locate content based on similar identity profile information between poster and user.
One object of the present invention is to provide a user friendly interface for Usenet and other communication channels that will enable a user to manage multiple identities in a way that a correct identity and, in some cases profile is presented when the user is engaged in an interaction within an environment or specific channel that the user approves of for the use of a particular identity. Another object of the present invention is to provide a mechanism for managing incoming communiqués and user contacts based on identities in a way that automatically organizes and prioritizes incoming messages and contact lists according to user approved environments and communication channels.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a mechanism for managing workflow tasks in coordination with active identities and user environments. Still another object of the present invention is to provide an enhanced content collection experience wherein binary content can be sampled in a more granular and enriched fashion based on author intent and can reflect style and character that can be disseminated by the collector efficiently before accepting or downloading the content.
Therefore, what is clearly needed in the art is an enhanced identity oriented communication, collaboration, and enhanced digital collection platform that will manage content, contacts, and communication-based tasks according to preferred user environments, activities, and identities. A platform such as this will perform management duties in the background while the user can concentrate on immediate communication, collaboration, and collection activities. Such a platform will enrich interaction between users and other network-based entities without compromising user-pertinent information for un-solicited use by certain entities.